


Speak Freely

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Canon Compliant, Gen, Headcanon Accepted, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 16:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck doesn't usually throw that word around. It's not the first time he's betrayed her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speak Freely

Chuck doesn't usually throw that word around. He has a reputation to uphold, and whatever else it may be, it doesn't involve being a total wanker to women. But he never could stop himself from running his mouth, and the more he says, the redder Raleigh's eyes get, so finally he lets it out: "One of you bitches needs a leash."

It's Raleigh who hits him, but Chuck wishes it were Mako. He deserves that. 

It's not the first time he's betrayed her.

\-----

He doesn't even remember whose idea it was to sneak into the simulator. He was sixteen, about to enlist in the Jaeger Academy. Mako was fourteen, and she stood there calmly trying code after code on the keypad until Chuck pulled out his father's access card and swiped it. Mako made a face at him, then darted into the simulator and started queueing up a scenario. 

Chuck looked around the mock-pod and moved to the pilot cradle, reached out to touch the honest-to-God real working Pons. A lot of cadets scrubbed out before they ever saw this room. And it wouldn't be the same, without the circuitry suits and the feedback, but he and Mako had sparred before, and between the Drift and their fists, they'd kill whatever came at them.

At first when they bridged, he wasn't sure the Pons was working. He was supposed to feel different, wasn't he? But then he realized the memory he had entered without really thinking about it, the one with the horrible, infinite, unfathomable sense of loss--that the crumbling buildings were not in Sydney. And he let it go and opened his eyes and looked at Mako, and she was waiting to see if he was all right, if he was ready, and he nodded at her without moving at all, and she punched the start button and the screen lit up to show them the ocean and there was a great bloody monster rising up to meet them, and they killed it in just over seven minutes.

They did two more drops that night, Mako dialing up the category each time, and Chuck fell into his bunk sweaty and exhausted and grinning like an arse, and he dreamt of metal fists and plasma cannons and a fucking huge sword and of Tokyo-Sydney, which he and Mako rebuilt out of Kaiju bones and shimmering neural bridges. 

And at commencement Stacker Pentecost told Chuck's class that he had an open door policy, and like an idiot he took the Marshall up on it. "Permission to speak freely, sir?" 

"I don't believe it would matter if I said no, Cadet." 

All ahead full. Chuck stood at ease. "I recommend that you accept Mako into the program early, Marshall."

Pentecost looked up from his desk. "You're already causing enough of a stir, Hansen. Why should I bend the rules twice?"

"Because she's ready, sir," Chuck said, as proudly as if he deserved some credit for it. "She won't scrub out, if that's what worries you. Mako's going to be a hell of a Jaeger pilot. She wants to kill those bastards as much as I do."

In the silence that followed, Chuck thought Marshall Pentecost had some of the saddest eyes he'd ever seen, second only to his father's. "Thank you for your recommendation, Cadet Hansen," Pentecost said at last. "You're dismissed."

He didn't let her in early. And Chuck thought that maybe when she finally did enlist, some other idiot from Pons training went to Pentecost and cocked it all up for her. But after a year went by and the Marshall didn't put her in a Jaeger, Chuck thought he should play it safe and not go out of his way to talk to her, apart from asking her to watch Max when Striker got deployed elsewhere. And then four years went by, and Mako waited, and Chuck racked up kill after kill with his father, and sometimes he dreamt of Tokyo-Sydney, and woke up knowing he had sabotaged it.

\-----

He's in his quarters, writing her an apology for the word and for everything else, when the news comes in about Leatherback and Otachi. And he stands there on top of a dead Striker and watches Gipsy fight the way he and Mako never could have, effortlessly, perfectly, and he feels something like jealousy and something like joy and he lets it out in a scream. 

And there's no time after that to speak to her. No time for anything, really, but one goodbye to one person, and even then he can't quite spit it out, when he's down at the Breach about to blow himself and his Marshall and his Jaeger out of all existence, and he wishes the Drift worked between Striker and Gipsy too, but since it doesn't, he hopes that when somebody goes through his personal effects they'll bring the note to her and maybe she'll remember him as something other than a wanker. Maybe somebody will, anyway.


End file.
